The new SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News and Advice)

That is a great summary:

 

Yowch, $875 for the 250GB Vertex
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227396

I can't wait to see more reviews, hopefully it will live up to expectations.

 

I am very surprised to see the intel ssds increasing in price at this point.
I would have figured they would drop prices further on those, once the Vertex comes out.

 

Not a good price but not a bad one... around $3.5/GB. Intel is around $4.5/GB at best. If it performs almost as well, it might be a worthwhile purchase.

 

Sitechart, nice breakdown of existing drives in the various categories. The SLC's sure are behind in GB's. By a big margin.

 

The reason I mention OCZ drives so much is because those are the ones I actually own. I decided to try some Solid series after reading positive reviews on them. At this time I do not own any SSDs other than the OCZs so when I recommend a low cost drive, it's going to be the one I have had experience with and can vouch for myself.

Now when cost isn't as much an issue, I recommend the higher priced drives like the ones with Intel and Samsung controllers.

 

Yeah! That's what our front page needs to look like. Someone needs to update that thing.

He copypasta from Ashura's above link

 

What the hell is an extreme drive? I definitely missed something...

 

It's a drive that everyone wants but no one can afford

 

And where are the Samsungs (SLC & MLC) on the XS.org ? XS thread need a lot of work in order to match this thread.

 

For price and value which is better: X25-M 60gb or Vertex 60gb?

 

Vertex... the 60GB Intel doesn't exist.

Assuming you mean the 80GB Intel, I think the jury is still out. We need more reviews on the Vertex (I'm sure many are waiting).

 

My bad, I did. I'm stilling debating if the X25-E is worth it. I'll wait and see how the Vertex is for the much less price.

 

Well, something like that; just kinda went down the Newegg listings and input the more well-known drives. If I had CrystalDiskMarks for the particular drive I added them below. Still missing all the Samsungs and Mtrons since I dunno where you'd get a quote for those (besides eBay). I'd say it's downright impossible to keep the prices updated for something like this, though...

 

Looking at that list, I realise my potential SSD-purchase might cost alot, however regarding the "sections":

Honestly, shouldnt these "midrange" SSD units still be better then your average 5400rpm(or in "extrem" cases 7200rpm) laptop drive?

Im getting a macbook that has 5400rpm disks by default, and trying to figure out which disk to get, 120gb is kinda minimum, there is to many options atm and as some people have said earlier, its hard to form your own opinion with the few and limited amount of information thats avalible.

 

Well, it's kinda like in most cases you'll get better performance out of those Mainstream complex JMicron drives; it's just that the worst-case scenarios will be worse than the worst-case scenarios on traditional spinners. Honestly if you need a lot of space, SSD just isn't the way to go yet; I'd say most people here own smaller drives that would fall in the Performance category rather than larger drives in the Mainstream and Budget categories.

If you want to play it safe, ignore the Mainstream and Performance sections.

And of course, these are Newegg prices. You may or may not be able to find significantly lower (or higher) prices on eBay or elsewhere.

 

I dont intend to actually store huge amounts of info on my discs, but I will dualboot winxp+ubuntu on my laptop (and probably have a little macos partition) I want decent amount of space for 2 OSes and still have storage for my files.
I might settle for a 64GB drive and just have the 120gb apple-disk in a little usb-casing with me when i need it.

I will also _only_ have the laptop, I dont have a stationary anymore.

I have a NAS at home with 4x1TB so I got storage for all my files elsewhere, but I still wanto be able to carry atleast resonable amount of files with me.
Atm im filling 300GB in my laptop, although, I can obviosly clean it out by lots.

Im guessing this has something todo with the controllers and getting the drive to actually work properly?
Perhaps, giving that I will have a 5400rpm disk, simply grabbing a 120GB SSD from the budget-section, could turn out to be the proper choice? (Even though I dont exactly like buying things from the budget sections.... ;-)).

Edit: Actually, when thinking about it, getting a "as slimline as possible" casing for a 2.5" disk and carrying that with the laptop could proove to be the best solution. Then i can just have movies and larger files stored on the external disc and acces it the few times I need it...

 

Essentially, the JMicron controller used in the Mainstream and Budget drives fails at random writes. Fails pretty hard, too. There are tweaks you can use to get around it failing, and for the most part, they work well enough. But sometimes, they don't. So while there's a good chance you'll be perfectly satisfied with a tweaked JMicron drive, it's still a crapshot to some degree.

The Mainstream drives try to ameliorate the innate problems with the JMicron controller by implementing what is essentially an onboard dedicated HW RAID controller. Again, this works well for the most part, but the fact that the JMicron controller fails at random writes still shows up in the performance figures.

I've also got most of my data on dedicated storage at home, and while I'd say I'm pretty conservative with disk space myself (having only had a 30GB internal drive right up through 2007), I've been using a 2.5" external drive for the past year and it's honestly a good storage solution if you have a small main disk. Currently I've got 64GB on my main machine, an 80GB external, and about 1TB of effective NAS.

 

Ok, so basically I hafto read up loads about this, I didnt know about this at first so thank GOD I checked this thread out (thought I would just to see what brands were preferable etc).

But about the HW controller, how many laptopboards actually have an onboard raid? This hasto be something in the controller of the disk itself even though I havent seen discs with their own raidcontrollers, so that sounds weird, but I havent started using SSD´s yet so..

Edit:
Thanks for some good and fast replies Wolf! Very appreciated.

 

It's just the G.Skill Titan and OCZ Apex that have the onboard RAID controller (and whatever other drives that may be based on this same general layout... Photofast GMonster, whatever). There's a JMicron RAID controller connected to two JMicron flash controllers. The implementation is completely invisible to the end user; your machine with see the drive as a single drive.

 

News to me, having a disk with its "own personal hw raid controller", but I suppose its a good thing they have acknowledged the problem of sorts and made an attempt to fix it

I think I will print loads of stuff and try to read it on the way home

 

This is a bit annoying..
I thought I would try to get a pricecheck done for this disc:
OCZ Solid Series OCZSSD2-1SLD120G, 265$ on american newegg.
About 380$ here, insane price difference!

 

Dell lists a 256GB SSD on their website for $750. I know people are pulling the Samsung 256GB SSD from Dells and selling on ebay. Does anyone know if Dell uses anything else? At $750 from them that would be the best deal on the Samsung. Their picture shows a Dell label slapped on the drive so it's hard to tell if it's the Samsung or not, but it does have the metallic looking case the Samsung has.

 

Didn't someone already buy that and confirm it was the Samsung?

 

Adata has a 512GB SSD in the works:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/05/a-data-launches-laptop-ready-2-5-inch-512gb-xpg-ssd-at-cebit/

 

Vertex 120GB is down to $395 after rebate on Newegg... $100 more to go then I may buy if the reviews are good.

But might wait for the Summit...

Or if those 3.5" SSD RAID buys come out that use a couple of 2.5" SSDs, then I might consider that and a couple of OCZ Solid's.

Or... too many choices.

 

Actually, I've seen a couple of these on eBay already. They're not the official Adata whatever-it's-called, but they look identical in every other way. Something like $75? Dunno how good they are, though, even if the do turn out to be the exact same thing; I imagine you'd get something close Titan/Apex performance by shoving a pair of Cores/Solids in there.

 

Just grab an extra SATA cable and get one of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998040

That way you don't risk saturating the SATA bus, since both drives are on separate cables. Or go crazy and put 4 in RAID in one of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998037

 

or just get two ordinary ssd's and put them in raid, without that raidbox? it's not like you don't have onboard raid on any pc you buy nowadays..

 

Im honestly thinking about skipping SSD with the current prices.
Its about 350$ for 120GB and I could just grab a 320GBfor 80$ (7200rpm/16mb seagate momentus).

I just cant find enough "evidence" its that big if a preformance-boost and/or energy saver, to be worth the price difference.

Am I wrong?

 

ok, from what I've learned so far, and from my own experience, it seams that installed OS could play a big part in way which ssd will work
so, I'm curious, which OS you guys R using...
4 me, win 7 worked but I did have some issues with some drivers and stuff, and after some time it started to hang some apps in some situations, I think it was a beta problems, and, xp works just fine, but, bench speeds are a few mbps slower than it was in windows 7, and it seams to use a little bit more processor time than it was in windows se7en...
didn't try vista so far, but I think I will, soon, also, I didn't use any 64bit os, only 32...

just wondering guys, what is your experience with the operation systems ?

 

Windows Vista works great on mine, but they are great-working ones anyways (mtron).

gurkburk82: wanna meet and test out my ssds? it's not the storage size that matters, it's the performance difference (and the quiteness.. finally quiet pc's).

 

If you've thought about playing with an SLC SSD but have been put off by the prices, this appears to be a very good deal. Use coupon "techbargains" for an additional 10% off:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA&cat=HDD&cpc=JAD

I realize that it's not the latest and greatest, but based on people's reports here in this thread, it's been a consistent performer, i.e., not plagued by stuttering or other issues... (it's used in Dells I believe).

 

Holy cow, I just bought an MLC for the same price... anyone know how trustworthy these guys are?

 

I just bought an external DVD burner from them that arrived on Monday, shipping was a little slow but other than that no problems. Their resellerrating is decent.

 

Btw, I'm gonna talk with the SuperTalent tonight - about UltraDrive LE.

Apparantly it has been delayed because of firmware issues.

IIRC, UltraDrive LE will use the same controller as OCZ Vertex, but it will be fitted with SLC flash memory. 128GB version will also be available. R/W sequential speeds are 230 MB/s and 170 MB/s, and they promise very high IOPS.

If they do it right and don't overprice it - this could be new "Samsung SLC" in terms of good performance for affordable price.

 

1. The greater capacity versions just use denser flash chips. All the Intel drives have 20 chips

2. Probaby more than $350 for 64GB X25-E . You'd be right for 32GB

X25-E is the best SSD out there, however pricey. So it comes down to Vertex vs the X25-M.

darq86: I use XP. I can tell you its pretty rare but it does happen. You'll have to see over a real long period, like 2-3 weeks at least.

 

Yea so I thought about it. So I talked to couple of people that knows about SSD plus my own search, and the X25-E might have 2 chips dedicated to doing w/e it needs to do and further scaled down for 1024/1000. So for the X25-E the real max allocation could be 64GB(the true "1024" GB).

As for reducing the size, I don't know if it will bring noticeable benefits. It could be just for corner case situations if at all. My speculation is time to reach performance loss would be longer when doing lot of writes.

 

It took like a week or so on windows 7 for me to start notice some hangups

still hope it's not an ssd thing, couse, other than that, it works so fast

 

I could possible use onboard RAID, but I'd rather not. I may have some issues with accessing the ports on my MB because I have two video cards in there and the 2nd one blocks some ports. Not really concerned about saturating the bus. The speed won't make that big of a difference for me. Maybe for my next Core i7 machine I will be more concerned.

That's cool... I looked into RAID cards, but I don't have any available PCI-e slots because they are disabled because I have two video cards.

 

Depends how much $$ you have and how you value your time.

It can be a big performance increase, but whether or not you find it worth the cost (money and loss of storage) is up to you.

For two notebooks I have, I think the relatively inexpensive OCZ Solid 60GB drives were worth it... but I don't need more than 60GB in those machines.

 

That's interesting, but I'd want to make sure the reviews are good before I go that route.

 

This is very interesting. I have been waiting for something just like this. Kind of a revision 2 of the original and still excellent Samsung. Please price this right. Please!

 

The credit needs to go to F@32.

I wish there was a more concerted effort to get new/bigger/better SLC drives out.

 

Thank you.
So you admit that you don't really know what you are talking about concerning SSDs, since you don't really have a lot of experience?
I have owned 3 different SSDs: OCZ Core V1, Patriot Warp V2 and intel x-25m. The Jmicrons suck and were slower in normal usage (with all the fancy OCZ tweaks) than my 7,200rpm laptop HDD!!!!

Why are you so hellbent on getting people to buy these drives if you aren't a spammer for OCZ?!?!?!?!?!?!?

 

I'm very tempted to just order a Vertex 30gb right now (form ZipZoomFly) as the price is very good and the said speed of 200/160 seems like it will be good enough in my lappy and would be much cheaper than the X25-E. I just don't really "need" that much speed to justify the price.

 

check OCZ forum, Vertex: 30gb x 3 + Adaptec 5405

 

That's impressive to me! I like simple setups and won't be needing raid though. But, just speculating, do you think the X25-E is significantly faster (like double or something) than the Vertex and is worth it?

 

Interesting idea, but we live in 2 different countries it seems, so that might be diffiult

I know its not the storage thats the main issue obviously, but it becomes an issue when it gets so low.
I will initially run 3 operatingsystems, winXP+Ubuntu+macOS (and switch out winxp for win7 later).
Just by that you get a heavy toll on the disc purely from operatingsystems taking space.
And take into consideration I only use 1 PC, I will have my laptop as a primary computer (with a NAS for storge, but still).
128 is minimum for me, and I just cant figure out if its going to be worth it or not.

The comparison im making is between a budget 128GB SSD, and a "high quality" 7200 rpm disk, where I get 300 GB+ almost without paying...

 

sure, if you need the storage locally, you can't not have it.

then again, i have vista + sound for djing + programming projects on a 32gb ssd and have no storage issues..

I can life with it with no problem, but it means changing a bit of thinking. the performance is worth paying more, but you should have to be able to live with the amount of storage. dunno how much ubuntu and macos need as i never use any of those os'..